When it comes to the Olympics, I am the equivalent of a Costco-size bottle of Valium. Funerals and car accidents are less of a downer.

“There is only one way left to improve the Olympics: to permanently end them,” I wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times on the eve of the 2008 Games, in Beijing. “The loftier the rose-colored rhetoric, which in the Olympics has become an Olympian growth industry, the worse the underlying stink. And this is an institution that is rotted in so many different ways.”

The Olympic Games of course have no chance of being banned. But history is on my side. For every great performance, there has also been a recurring underbelly of jingoism, bribery, murder, cheating, and expenditures by impoverished host nations bordering on criminal recklessness. The upcoming Games in Rio de Janeiro have been marked by protests over cost, political divisiveness, the outbreak of the Zika virus, the possible ban of the Russian team because of allegations of massive doping by past athletes, and dangerous pollution. Many in Brazil have derided the expense (estimates vary wildly from $5 billion to $15 billion) as the country has gone into economic free fall because of lagging growth and the doubling of the budget deficit.

It isn’t very hard to make an iron case against the Olympics. Yet I always feel guilt, like a joyless journalistic crank. I will never admit to being entirely wrong—I am a joyless journalistic crank—but over the past four years there has been some re-appraisal.

The Summer Games in London in 2012 were marvelous, the opening and closing ceremonies fun, funky, a little tongue-in-cheek, and not obsessed with national chest beating or an edifice complex. I was there for Vanity Fair to profile the American gymnast Gabby Douglas, winner of the gold in the all-around competition. At least some of the cynicism I had about Olympic athletes was washed away after meeting this woman of poise and verve and athletic wonder, all at the age of 16. She was the best of America and is planning to compete in Rio.

I am also under the influence of Caitlyn Jenner, whom I wrote about for the magazine in June of last year after her historic transition from Bruce Jenner, who had become an overnight American sensation after winning the decathlon at the Summer Games in Montreal, in 1976. The Olympics still made an indelible impression, but not because of the winning. Jenner competed in 1972 and 1976, and what she remembers most vividly are the opening ceremonies as thousands of athletes united. “There were all those flags from all those countries. I had never seen anything like it. The pride I felt. The solidarity I felt with athletes from other countries. It will always be one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

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I still remember Bob Beamon setting a world record in the long jump in 1968; Jenner after winning the decathlon waving a tiny American flag given to him by a spectator; the Miracle on Ice; swimmer Dara Torres at the age of 41 competing in her fifth Olympics and winning three silvers in 2008 to give her 12 medals for her career.

So maybe getting rid of the Olympics can wait until after I am dead.

VIDEO: Venus Williams Learns to Samba in Five Minutes Flat

To learn more about all Olympic hopefuls, visit teamusa.org. The Olympics begin on August 5.